****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 0:00

Hello, I'm Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:20

Welcome back, and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I'm Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me Shark.. I am a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver, host of this show, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:33

Are you thriving in chaos? Change has always been around us. But I mean, just look at the world in the speed of changes. Today, your company is likely going through a lot of reinvention and innovation. At least that's what the surveys say. But a lot of those companies claimed to be doing a lot but not accomplishing nearly enough. We're seeing companies come and go more quickly. We even see the same over time with countries, then what's the best way to stay ahead of this and reinvent yourself, reinvent your company and reinvent your world? What mindset and tactics do you need with reinvention for thriving and chaos?

Kenneth Kinney 1:08

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is a resilience and reinvention scientist, entrepreneur, consultant, and the author of The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive In Chaos.

Kenneth Kinney 1:19

And on this episode, we will discuss surviving and thriving in chaos, Kazakhstan and the Soviet Union, nomadic peoples, some heading to Columbus, Halloween costumes, an excellent speaker who isn't a professional speaker seven disciplines, three in particular, for dealing with change, the disruption of chat GPT, factory presets, moving the chairs on the Titanic versus companies who truly innovate, babies requiring a strategic plan, the Caspian Sea and Lake Erie, picking a capital, horsemeat and culture, and a lot lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:49

So let's tune into a chief reinvention officer with a chaotic shark who thrives on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 2:00

Nadya, welcome to A Shark's Perspective. If you will tell us a little bit about your background and your career to date.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 2:06

I'm happy to be here, Kenneth and I'm delighted to share a little bit of my story. So I am currently co founder and Chief Reinvention Officer of an educational institution called Reinvention Academy and I also co own we exist reinvention agency, which is a consulting business. My previous reincarnations, I had the luxury of serving as a professor in academic environment as a Coca Cola chaired professor of strategy and sustainability. And then had a chance to also serve as an executive in the Mining and Metals business. So between academia, corporate job and intrapreneurial job, I feel very much the story of my own life being the story of reinvention, born in Kazakhstan, Soviet Union now live in us,

Kenneth Kinney 2:57

if you will tell a little bit of a story about your family, and really a little bit about your heritage, because I've heard it on other shows before. And I think it's fascinating about the story with your name and where that even originated from with your grandfather.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 3:09

Yeah, I think all of us carry the stories that we may take for granted. And if we only honor those stories, we'll find that every one of them is a heroic story. Talking about survival rates, even in the recent generations, the fact that we're still here means somebody really had to struggle and fight to survive, and to make sure that we're still continuing the bloodline. So I was born in the Soviet Union, right before the collapse that right a couple of decades before the collapse. And my family comes from Kazakhstan. And Kazakhstan is this interesting part of the world that is ninth largest country in the world by territory, some vast land, but there's very few people who met any causes. Why is that because about 100 years ago, the Soviet Union government engineered an artificial famine, it wanted to clear the space and in that artificial famine, 40% of Kazakh population got killed. So if you think about how many of us would still be here, if 40% did not die, and projected on the current population growth, you will see why there are so few of us left. We are a nomadic culture, which influences a lot of the way we make decisions and how we build our relationships and our value systems. And in my case, one of the elements of my life is mass loss of life that happened generations, one after another. So my great grandfather survived the famine, but he was very active vocal opposition leader and he was not big in a tiny village but he was vocal about. So he was arrested trade as an enemy of the state and executed and my great grandmother died right there. And my grandfather was shipped to an orphaned house very far, few 1000 miles away in the country who have never been Russia, to speak the language he had never heard Russian, to be in an environment that is very foreign to him. And he had to adapt and survive. But he grew up again, a journalist, not exactly in line with the Communist Party. So he was arrested many times tortured in jail and killed himself after the last jail sentence before I was born. So my history, the history of my family, what my parents were preparing me for, the skill set they were giving me was all about surviving extreme turbulence, extreme disruption, and being able to continue no matter what happens to you. And I'm thankful and also have a blessing of turning it into career because essentially, this is what I do with companies all around the world. And this is what we teach and develop tools for for practitioners, consultants, coaches, speakers, facilitators all around the world.

Kenneth Kinney 6:19

In the place that you thought that nomadic has refugees needed to go to is Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 6:27

That's a family situation. I had the luxury of doing my doctorate at Case Western Reserve here in Ohio, a wonderful school, a place where my specialty originated in the 60s. So I love the school, I met my husband bumping into each other and Halloween party, he was an MBA student just finishing up and his family lives in Ohio. He's originally from Belarus, but his family's here. And when we spent 10 years living and working in Europe, and when my daughter reached 12, she says, You people do whatever you want. I'm going home and she's American as it comes born and raised in Cleveland, she loves America, this is her life. This for countries like you live your European life, I'm going home. So we chose a place where she could be with a family while we travel the world for work, and we're very grateful to our higher love it. We're big patriots of Ohio. And whenever somebody jokes about how wide you know, rural and develop it is they clearly have not been in this fast moving growing metro area for a long time.

Kenneth Kinney 7:37

So I'm gonna put you on the spot. Yes. What costumes were you both wearing when you met your husband?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 7:45

I wasn't in costume. So because of national. And I don't think he he always jokes that he was wearing a costume of a drunk. He was a bit tipsy. So was it?

Kenneth Kinney 7:58

Yeah, that's great. I'm curious, you know, I got to hear you speak. I was too embarrassed to come up because I did not have a voice had to avoid putting out a couple episodes because I was sick with sinus stuff for way too long. Thank God, it wasn't COVID. But I got to hear you speak. And you did a remarkable job at National Speakers Association's winter workshop where you also let everybody know that you're not a professional speaker. Don't do that, typically by trade. But obviously speaking has done a lot for you. You've done several TEDx talks, why do you consider yourself a non speaker?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 8:32

Because that's not how I make my money. Right? I think professional speakers are people for whom their revenue stream coming from speeches is a significant portion of their revenue. So I don't, I occasionally book a paid speech. Most of the time, every time this happened with TEDx as for example, my organizers approached me because they needed the perspective I was bringing, they wanted me to share my research or they wanted me to explain the concept from one of my books or something like that, which was an important part of my mission. So here I need to say what I do and why I do what I do. In my academic career, my big focus was on large system survival. So my specialty, what I study is why one system survives in another disappears. You can look at it at the level of the entire human system, which is a human civilization, you can look at the separate civilizations, or communities. You can study why one city in the state is thriving in another city is disappearing and going into extreme poverty. And of course, one of the systems that we study a lot as business. Why one company in a similar industry in a similar environment, meeting similar challenges is growing, while another one is disintegrating and to complete cares So for us, it's big, big, driving energy for my team, for my community. And for me personally, the issue of how do we continue to sustain and increase the level of life in a system? And a practical application as how do we sustain a level of life in a company? Or how do we sustain a life, a level of life and a career? Yeah, we all go through ups and downs in our career, how do we uplift our career? How do we make sure that we never go beyond the point of no return? And because of that, I occasionally take to stage mainly because I would like to make sure that more cities survived and die. And more companies survived and die and more countries rather than die. Because it's a personal story. I saw what happens when the country disintegrates. The Soviet Union, and I am all for disintegration. I was super happy. For me, this was a blessed moment. But the way it happened was extremely, extremely terrible. I don't know how else to say it. Right. So there was no deliberate discussion, there was no plan, there was no referendum, there was no transition, there was nothing it just a few people got drunk. Literally, this is not the exaggeration. The original articles of Soviet Union were signed by three countries. So those three countries could disintegrate those articles. And the leaders of those three countries met in a sauna, and sign the disagree disintegration paper without much thought. And our republic was so unprepared that it took us almost three years to develop our own currency, we had no skill, we had no ability capacity to even think what is a currency? What is the National Bank? How do you build one and what's necessary to create a system. So knowing how easy it is to destroy a system, a country, a company, a career, my passion is to make sure we learn how to reinvent before that is necessary. And that's why I speak I accept speaking engagements, that

Kenneth Kinney 12:15

is a hell of an answer for why you're not as a you don't consider yourself a conventional speaker. Nobody ever is gonna be able to Trump that one. So especially with that whole backstory, by the way, is a reference a by these reference. She's a fantastic speaker, thank you. But talking about the disciplines that you because you alluded to a lot of this in that story, but the disciplines for dealing with change some of the ones that maybe stand out the most to you.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 12:39

Yeah, so in my work, we've done a lot of research in what are the pillars that are crucial to make sure you have built in resilience and you're able to face change, and I won't name all seven of them, but there's three that are kind of fundamental. And those three are anticipating change. And within anticipating change, this other skills of forecasting and foresight, this other skills of strategic planning. This adds a lot of what future thinking and future of work Futurism and trendwatching is about. So anticipating change, designing change, this is all about innovation and creativity and facilitation and jobs to be done type of work that methodologies that you could use and the final one is implementing change. So anticipated change, designing, changing, implementing change. And then implementing change would be project management, change management, Scrum, agile and many other disciplines. And the problem is that traditionally, these disciplines worked in separate lines, not necessarily integrated with each other. So and forgive me for gross misrepresentation or generalization. Anyone from this disciplines don't take me seriously, but I will kind of joke about so most of the time, the strategies don't want to deal with emotionally mature change management people. And the change management people or org development people don't exactly want to look at the finance, and Scrum module design thinking innovation, people want to live in their own right, don't touch us, just give us a budget and leave us alone. So there is a lot of Lost in Translation situation. And also there's a lot of loss of time. And as you know, from my thought the greatest change that happened in the past is just the speed of change itself. going through the motions of transferring your transfer, transforming your company or your career 20 years ago, you had a lot of time to test things out to think about them to go slow to measure carefully, to try focus groups to test it again to make I'm sure you're at perfection. We don't have that anymore the rules of short cycle. So the business model cycle, the rules of a short cycle, actually almost exactly opposite, that the rules have a long cycle. So what was saving you in the past might be killing you today. And that's why the bridge between all these disciplines anticipating change, designing change and implementing change, the bridges have to become much tighter, so that we can pass the baton seamlessly and extremely fast.

Kenneth Kinney 15:32

Well, you did say some controversial things in there that probably got Scrum Masters fighting with Six Sigma, Black Belts, they're throwing down their phones, right? Now listen to this, with all of the change coming, especially and I think you wrote this book, when he 20. So write this last book of yours in the middle of the 19

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 15:53

COVID. It's actually just because we didn't need to travel we said, Okay, if we don't travel, we have time. That's right, exactly.

Kenneth Kinney 16:00

happened quickly in relative terms. But one of the things that I think about now even which was a hot topic at the conference, where I saw you was obviously, thinking about the speed of change, and I and everybody else that was dropping little notes about Chet GPT. When you think about where even that was in beta version, a few years ago, to where it is now, I think that a lot of people were probably able to comprehend change, even at the speed of COVID. But where do you think people are? There's a little bit of not fear, if you will, but the fear of the unknown. But when you talk about that shortening timeline, chat, GBT is is making people think about this much more quickly even than they've ever dreamed of. Yes, with those two disciplines, again, that don't mirror Short Term versus long term strategy. What's your advice to, to how to deal with that speed of change that none of us have experienced ever?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 17:01

So there's a few things that I want to remind us of, so that we don't scare ourselves into kind of frenzy that tends to happen with any disruption. So this year, it's Chad GPT. And then the last year, it was the first version of chat, the public version of Chatty PT came out in November, so And before that, it was massive layoffs in the tech industry. And before that, it was inflation. And before that, it was COVID. And before that, it was something else, right, we've had something else nonstop. So the first thing I want to remind us is, when you think about the way we're born in the first factory presets our nervous system has a normal baby has no problem with change. A typical healthy baby is not resistant to change whatsoever. And they are born Greenlanders, this is what they do everyday. So when the child is born, they don't know that anything moving around them is their own limbs. And then one day they make the connection and start learning how to control their hands and arms and legs and so on. And they have no problem failing and failing. Again, that's not to make babies who bowling 200 times in two days, say, you know, this is not for me, I'm just not gonna you know, I'm not meant to walk, but it just doesn't happen, right? You don't need to pay baby bonus to motivate them to start crawling. This is natural to us. This is a factory preset, the same way uncertainties a factory preset, you don't see a baby laying there and demanding an agenda from their mother I need to know precisely. You know, give me a strategic plan. What if my limb will not develop a risk management report on what happens if the legs don't grow and give me a precise treat? Were born the factory preset is uncertainty is normal to us. We don't exactly this is all artificially created changes in us through the education system, not because of any kind of conspiracy whatsoever. It's totally because the time when the current educational system was developed was the time of industrial revolution and we were creating kids for the industrial age where you need to do the same thing for 40 years long cycles, no change happening too fast. They would argue it was happening fast team factories and all of that, but compared to today's you know you the moment engineering life started and Industrial Age started. This is one cycles, long career incremental change and we in artificially introduced some of these things. So number one is working on mindset and coming back to your factory price. said number two, what I think most individuals and companies don't fully grasp is that the true art of thriving and turbulence is not only managing change, but much more interestingly, managing continuity. And I'll repeat it again, it's a dance between managing change and managing continuity. Most of us are very clear on what needs to be changed. We know what's not working, either our customers, let us know or employees, let us know our financial reports, let us know what's not working, our suppliers stop delivering, and we need to change. So we are pretty clear on the change part. We're much less artful. We're much less masterful when it comes to managing continuty. What do we keep? What do we preserve? What are the capabilities that were not willing to compromise on? What are people practices, products, whatever, it can be anything that is the core of us that we will not, you know, trade, in exchange for a moment of a trend or you know, on a whim of a fashion? And when you become very clear, what is that that is uncompromisable unchangeable in you, and what are you managing and continually preserving and nurturing, change becomes very easy, because you know, you will never lose what truly means something, and it becomes easy for your employees, it becomes easy for you, because you're super clear that you are not trading in the part of your business or part of yourself, that truly means something, then it's actually liberating act, you're finding a new version of yourself, instead of feeling like your entire identity or entire market position, your entire brand, whatever it is, is losing its grounds and disintegrating in front of your eyes. No, it's not. I am not a scientist, I am not an executive, I am not a consultant, those are just some of the fields in which I've played. So if I left an academic field, I am no less of a anything. And then if I say,

Kenneth Kinney 22:18

when talking about chaos, and the need to reinvent, to thrive in it, especially with larger companies, you must run into this all the time. They're all or a lot of them are trying to reinvent constantly, or at least claim they are. What do you think the difference is between the ones that are saying they're moving in that direction, and truly don't move in that direction, because for every company that probably duck falls out of existence? Kmart and Sears probably claimed that they were reinventing daily, you know what I mean? Like, there are a lot of people that make that claim, and then it shows that they weren't.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 22:55

Yes, so first, it's important to clarify what we in our school of thought called reinvention. For us reinvention is exactly the criteria I mentioned, which is preserving and increasing the level of life and the system. So if you move the chairs on the Titanic, and the Titanic still tanked, you didn't reinvent you can call it whatever you want. The The proof is in the pudding. Either it's alive or it's not done. Right. So for us, it's not the check marks, not hitting some artificial KPIs. It's either the level alive and the system is sustained and increased or it's not no discussion. Now, we do research every two years to understand the trends around the speed of change and how companies are reacting. And I'm happy to see that this year for the first time. The Global CEO report will be WCS 2023 CEO report shows reinvention number one priority of all CEOs in the world. So yes, they are claiming that this is very important. And according to PwC, which is of course one of the big four, auditing consulting firms. CEOs right now are spending 47% of their time on reinvention but want to spend more time with their ideal being 50 Sounds about 60% of their time, but much more interesting is their investment. Because currently bigger portion of investment, up to 62% of investment is going to reinventing the business for the future rather than preserving the current business. So it's very clear, they say it's a priority and they're putting their money where their mouth is. The problem is is effectiveness of those investments. So we do research every two years. And our 2022 report actually showed a drop in effectiveness in 2020. Our our respondents the companies all over the world saying that about 65% were ineffective in their attempts to reinvent And in 2022 74% said that they're ineffective. So we significantly dropped in effectiveness. We were bad. I mean, 65% ineffective 35% effective is a bad number. Now suddenly, it's only 26, effective, 74 effective. So it's very clear that while we are calling things reinvention in terms of where it truly matters have we delivered? Have we increased the level of life where now,

Kenneth Kinney 25:33

I have a lot of C suite folks that I know that listen to the show that reached out before, obviously, it's true that they are thinking about reinvention, a lot, what's your one piece of advice to help them get started to execute instead of just thinking about,

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 25:50

I think one of the biggest issues what you already named the mindset work and resistance, and fear of change that naturally is present in a lot of companies, maybe the CEOs don't, but the employees do. And there's a lot of resistance. So the way one piece of advice, one pragmatic, we teach tons of tools, and so on. But I wanted to give you one pragmatic advice, which comes from a very well researched methodology, called appreciative inquiry. It's all about what data set you use to start your inventory join. And most of us start the dataset, start with a data set that is really following our worst level of performance. So I'll give an example. We have dropped in sales. So let's reinvent ourselves down. Let's analyze all the reasons why the drop in sales happened. And let's eliminate those factors so that we can bring the sales up, or we have a drop in productivity, our yield is down, let's analyze all the factors that are driving the loss of productivity, and then remove those factors. So we do. And of course, when you do that analysis, what happens in a team? Everyone needs to put the blame somewhere, I mean, who is the one driving the loss? Why are the sales down? Well, it's the supply chain, or it's the manufacturing what they signed the contract we could never possibly complete or the other way around, we're ready to produce but the salespeople just don't. And there's the blame game going on around. So my little but huge piece of advice. And this is, you know, books and books, methodologies and methodologies. But simplest start is started by analyzing not the drop in performance in the same area, but peak performance. So let's say, in the last five months, you lost sales take exact same period of time. And notice any moments where you were above average, so let's say you have losses throughout the week, but on Thursday, you had a little peak, and the next week is going you know, pretty bad. But then on Tuesday, there is a little peak, collect the peaks and analyze what happened those days, that was not happening in previous days. In those analytical meetings, believe me, the mood will be different, because everyone wants to prove that they were the one driving the high performance driving that peak. And you will notice what may have happened accidentally, that needs to be put into a system. What are you doing on those days differently? What's driving the sales on those days? And how can you take those drivers and those factors from accidental to systemic, through standard operating procedures through changing the way you do things, and so on. So that would be my little start. Because what's important, you people need to get their mood up, their confidence up, they need to you need to change the mood in the room to start bigger inventions. First, they need to believe that change is not always a crappy, horrible thing. And it's not always a loss. And you know, they tell us that it's going to be good, and then everyone is fired. That's the typical story of change. So you they need to be in a better space. And second, they need to find something pragmatic and real. So that they are ready both confidence and competence, right? We need to increase their confidence, emotional space, their mindset game, and we need to give them something pragmatic to work on. So that competence boosts up as well.

Kenneth Kinney 29:28

Fantastic. Nadya, I asked everybody who appears on the show this question, and I don't think you're going to find any in Lake Erie or in the Caspian Sea. And you've probably never been asked this on any other show. But what is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 29:42

Oh my god. I'm afraid of water. So the Caspian Sea for those who don't know is the only body of water that is significant next to Kazakhstan, but it's not a sea technically like Lake Erie. It's actually classified as a lake. And I've never been because it's like three A flight away from me not. Not car drive. It's like it's far. So I've never been so what kind of shark? I....

Kenneth Kinney 30:10

When you were in Kazakhstan as a kid were you exposed to like Jaws and those kinds of movies that yeah,

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 30:16

they don't exactly make me super happy. And I'm not comfortable with any living creatures in the water. They scare me generally speaking, but I do. I am just completely thankful for that biodiversity in general. So I wouldn't name a shark. But most of them, if you look deeply into the story is incredible, incredible masters of the sea, and contributors to the health of the ocean. So I don't have a name for a shark. I would lie. No worries. But I, I'm sending them good wishes.

Kenneth Kinney 30:56

Good. Well, I It's hard enough to for me to try to convince people that sharks are not what they saw in movies. I'm trying to get them to adopt that since a change.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 31:05

Sharks are a glorious, glorious master that is necessary in the sea water. So I have a lack of respect. I'm just a bit personally not. Not exactly looking for friendship.

Kenneth Kinney 31:18

Fair enough. All right. Well, not it's a special time of the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 31:25

Okay, let me drum roll. All right. All right.

Kenneth Kinney 31:28

Number one, you're taking someone on a tour of Kazakhstan, and you only have time to take him to one historical city. Do you take him to the old capital of Almaty and pardon me for saying it wrong? Or the newer capital of Astana?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 31:43

Oh, no question, my home country, my hometown Almaty.

Kenneth Kinney 31:47

Why so? I've never been to either. So I don't know.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 31:51

Almaty is right in the mountains is a very, very high mountain range. So it's very beautiful. And it's the most unusual collection of cultures. So we have about 175, cultures, ethnicities living in our country, also, because Soviet Union would forcibly remove any ethnicity they didn't like, they would just put everyone in the trains and move the entire population of Chechnya, to Kazakhstan, to pretty much have murdered them on the way and many of them died, unfortunately, on the way and then the rest live. And we have very, very close relationship with changing our culture because of that. So I love Almighty because you cannot quite place it. It's not Europe, and it's not Asia, it's Middle East. It's not you cannot figure out what it is. It's very, very diverse. And it's beautiful in terms of mountains and so on.

Kenneth Kinney 32:48

Alright, number two, which do you enjoy your time as more of as a professor or as a speaker?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 32:58

Wow, that's a tough question.

Kenneth Kinney 33:01

You're up in front of an audience talking. So

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 33:05

I missed the professor's years because you're there for much longer time, and your relationship stays for longer. So I started as executive professor in 2004 or five, right? almost 20 years ago. My students were mid managers, some more senior managers, many of them are CEO board members, and some are retired right now. Some of them I know their kids, some became my family friends. So I would say professor.

Kenneth Kinney 33:36

Fair. All right, you've got friends over and you want to have a taste of home. Beshbarmak. How I said that wrong in a basic format, which is this, which is boiled meat with thin pasta sheets and sauce, or Lagman, which is the handmade noodle dish with meat and vegetables.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 33:59

It's a very hard question again, because they're very different in nature. So it depends on the day. But this bar mark has horse meat, forgive me

Kenneth Kinney 34:09

It's your last meal on Earth.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 34:12

Say it again.

Kenneth Kinney 34:12

It's like it's your last meal on Earth. Sure. Which of those two would you choose?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 34:16

I would choose beshbarmak of course me this sounds horrific, right? All of you who own horses you like our collective gasp It's a casual cultural difference. So Kazak has raised and naturalized most horses in history of humankind. We supplied horses to Macedonians during Alexander the Great the Macedonian during the War of Alexander the Great and supplied most of the horses to China to fuel their growth. So our relationship with horses is very different and very close, but that closeness also means we eat them in the taste is amazing. So I apologize as I would have been for hours

Kenneth Kinney 34:58

I get the cultural differences. Well, all you have to do is really explain somebody if they think that's offensive, just go spend some time in Korea, or Philippines or some other countries that have vast cultural differences in their food and what they eat than we do. So it's,

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 35:13

let me give you a funny example. There are some cultures in Asia by the incredible that we would eat chicken embryo. Exactly. Yeah, that's an egg. And that was a chicken embryo.

Kenneth Kinney 35:24

Exactly. It's crazy. All right, number four. So you've written books, right?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 35:31

I've written quite a few. Let me see embedded sustainability over fish I've written for myself, and then I contribute to others.

Kenneth Kinney 35:38

I want to I want to I want you to grade between the two "Overfished: An Ocean Strategy" or "How to Thrive in Chaos". Which do you feel like is a better book better representation of what you wanted to say as an author?

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 35:52

Right now how to thrive in chaos. I would say, Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 35:56

And it's speaking to the nuttiness in the world. Alright. Number five, and the most important question that you're going to be asked today and you've lived here long enough biscuits or cornbread.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 36:07

Oh, cornbread, okay.

Kenneth Kinney 36:08

Okay. There's there's a Cracker Barrel in Columbus. So

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 36:12

I cornbread, especially if there's a bit of jalapeno in.

Kenneth Kinney 36:15

Yeah, good choice. All right. So Nadya, where can people find out more about you learn more about what you're doing and keep up with your, your TED talks, your books, your consultancy your speaking and all the more.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 36:27

So learn2reinvent dot.com with a two being number learn. Number two, reinvent that comm is where you find tons of resources for you. There are resources there for intrapreneurs. So for example, business model reinvention card that you can download today, there is an 85 Page preview of the last book on thriving and cares that you can download it right now. And of course, we host live events, and you will find the links on the same home page to the easy reinvention lab or whatever live free events will host we would love to have you.

Kenneth Kinney 37:00

Awesome, Nadya, thank you again. It's been an honor. Thank you for joining us on A Shark's Perspective.

Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva 37:05

Thank you for having me.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 37:11

So there was my conversation with Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva, a resilience and reinvention scientist, entrepreneur, consultant, and the author of The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive In Chaos. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with her.

Kenneth Kinney 37:27

First, Dr. Nadya talks about dealing with the pillars that are crucial for built in resilience. The three fundamental ones are anticipating change, designing change, and implementing change. What she most importantly reminds us of with those is the cycles of change that are so much faster than they used to be. As she says, traditionally, these were separate swim lanes, if you will, but now they're not. And the greatest change is the speed of change itself, you simply don't have as much time to react as he used to have the roles of short cycles are opposite of long cycles. And what was saving you in the past might be killing you today. The bridges between all of these disciplines must be much tighter.

Kenneth Kinney 38:04

Second, I wasn't going to initially talk about this subject again, but the world is consumed by talking about chat GPT she's right. We're constantly barrage with fantastic tales of good and horrible change. Today, it's shared GPT last year was something else tomorrow. It's something different. Unfortunately, the clickbait nature of the news doesn't help. Whether you believe Nadia, Elon Musk, or the Terminator movies never fear change. Even though chat GPT seems very different. Just understand that there is a real opportunity to learn how to employ it like any other tool in your favor, hopefully only for good.

Kenneth Kinney 38:38

Third, I love the discussion on reinvention and companies and what the C suite believes they are doing. There is hardly a company out there who doesn't claim to at least be innovative to the point of reinvention, most claiming she cites a study that nearly 50% of those are spending much time and money on this. However, what she asked when I asked is are they effective? She often talks about the Titanic syndrome. I'll paraphrase this broadly. But if you do a lot to move around the deck chairs on the Titanic, and you still have a sinking ship, then you haven't accomplished much. It also reminds me of so many people who claim to be incredibly busy, but never really get anything accomplished. What I would simply ask is if you're in one of those roles, what is all of this reinvention doing to truly serve your customers versus what is just on the packaging or the surface? Your customers don't have to see the company sausage making process, but they do have to eventually experience the result of those changes. Make that reinvention worse something to both of you.

Kenneth Kinney 39:35

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 39:39

Thank you again for the privilege of your time, and I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 39:44

I know one way to thrive in chaos and it's joining us here on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

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